Some restaurant food is impossible to reproduce at home: It's just too complicated. Here, we streamlined the ingredient lists and simplified the techniques of three star chefs--Alfred Portale, Wayne Nish and Laurent Tourondel--to create eight easy dishes that evoke the delicious flavors of the originals.

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Chef Way:Architectural FoodIn 1984, chef Alfred Portale opened Gotham Bar & Grill in New York City and floored the culinary world with his towering architectural dishes. Here, his 8-inch-tall salad, called Leeks Vinaigrette with Fingerling Potatoes, Quail Eggs and Micro Greens in a Grainy Mustard Vinaigrette, is composed of perfectly uniform-size leeks meticulously stacked like Lincoln Logs. Frilly greens like frisée piled on top of the leeks make this tall salad even loftier.

Chef Way: Exotic IngredientsChefs love ingredients that are esoteric or from very small producers. Wayne Nish of March in New York City, for instance, serves a dish he calls Four Story Hill Farm Chicken with Confit of Shallots, Iranian Barberries and Clove in Hard Pear Cider. Finding the ingredients isn’t the only tricky part: Nish prepares them using four different cooking techniques.